My Ta04 / NSX collection

[t3garett 268]

Hi all,

I've never posted anything much about my cars or my rc collection mainly because I have 2 different jobs, 2 kids and no much spare time, but some of my friends keep nagging me to post something about my ta04's and NSX's so here goes !

I'll do my best to keep this thread alive and updated regularly so bear with me.

It all started with my move from buggies (I have 15 of them ) to on road, I started out with a TB02, then acquired a TB02 EVO that I still have today, I then got the TA06 when it came out and one day I found myself being dragged by my wife to a car boot sale not far from home and stumbled on a smashed, dust covered, half destroyed tamiya TA04ss with the most beat up Audi TT ABT body on it I'd ever seen. It was complete with transmitter, receiver, motor and esc and I bought it for 10 euros !!!!

I bought it for one purpose only : lending it to my mates who don't do rc to drive with me when they visit and want to see the cars in action and letting my 3 year old son play with it.

I got it home, put a battery in it and low and behold it worked perfect. So I didn't clean it, didn't check the settings and just left it as it was in its dust, grime and perished tires. I knew nothing about TA04's and didn't pay much attention to it untill.......

[t3garett 268]

It sudenly dawned on me that this ta04 had done at least a year of bashing in the hands of friends and familly and had never once broken or failed me. I had never ever driven it so I started getting intrigued, after looking at it more closely I realised it had full ball bearings, a very efficient drive train and lots of setup options, so I set it up properly and decided to give it to my brother in law, who is also my co-pilot in real life and is a moderate rc enthusiaste (he's never raced but has a tt01 and a couple buggies and knows how to drive ) the next time he came to visit.

To cut a long story short : brother in law comes, go to local outdoor race track , he has the ta04, I have my ta06 (hopped up to "R" spec" ) we both running 23turn brushed and he procede to beat the #### out of me with the ta04

[t3garett 268]

The ta04 is the car that has the most surprised me in all my rc life. That day I proceded to fully dismantle the car, clean everything, change all worn out parts and add the only hop up it will ever receive : some low friction aluminium dampers, here it is :

[t3garett 268]

This car got me really interested in ta04's, a couple of weeks later I found a ta04R in good condition with it's box and the rare toyota altezza carbon body. Here is a photo of it (on the right) sorry I haven't got any readily available photos of the chassis (I will post some soon I promise !) :

The ta04R was also a revelation to me, lighter, more agile and much more precise than the ta04s. This got me wanting even more ! I learned of the existance of the ta04 pro, the ta04 "r tuned" and the ta04 trf. So the quest began.

[t3garett 268]

I started looking for a ta04 pro or ta04 trf but to no avail, I found a pro in france (where I live) but at a ludicrous price and in very bad condition. I then started looking just for the parts to build a pro but the chassis plates are rare and the price is steep so I began to give up, I finally decided to put a "wanted" in the sales section of tamiyaclub and after a week or so of no anwers I was contacted by Eric959 who had a ta04R converted with the full ta04pro SSG (silver surface graphite ) set (chassis, top deck, front and rear damper stays). We had a long email exchange about our passion for tamiya's, ta04's, trf414's and real sports cars, all along I was dreading the price he wanted for it after seeing 80£ ssg chassis plates selling on ebay but his price was beyond sympathetic it was almost symbolic in my eyes so I got the car. Eric959 sent me lots of photos while he was waiting for the payment and as the days went buy he kept adding things to the parcel he was sending me, such as an MRT esc and spare ta04 parts. He had warned me the NSX body was in poor shape with cracks, splits and shreadded decals, the body looked so vivid and colourful that I started looking for a replacement body even before he sent the car. I managed to find a new original NSX 2002 raybrig decal sheet but I couldn't find the body. Having no knowledge of tamiya NSX's at the time I ordered a new NSX 2004 Raybrig body hoping it was the same. Here is the car before he sent it to me :

[t3garett 268]

It turns out that the 2004 NSX raybrig body is identical from the front upto the end of the doors to the 2002 Raybrig NSX but from the doors to the rear a lot of small changes take place, the wheel arches are different, the side air intakes are different as is the rear bumper. So, a bit dissapointed with my impulsive 2004 NSX buy I decided to try and restore the 2002 body Eric959 sent. After cleaning, gluing, repairing and polishing here is what it looked like before the new decals :

 

[t3garett 268]

Here it is with the decals and after hours and hours of repairs :

[t3garett 268]

While working on the ta04 SSG chassis I wondered what to do with the 2004 NSX raybrig body, wheather to sell it or paint it or what. I decided to finally give my ta04ss some love and get rid of the horrible Audi TT body and replace it with the 2004 NSX raybrig body (the idea of having 2 ta04's with 2 NSX raybrig bodies pleased me ) so I bought the 2004 decals and rear wing set and here it is :

For the NSX enthusiasts out there (if they exist apart from me ! ) you can see the difference between 2002 and 2004 bodies in the last picture.

[t3garett 268]

So to resume,

At that point I had 3 ta04's , an SS, an R and an R converted to SSG chassis. One with the NSX 2002, one with the 2004 and one carbon pattern Altezza. I said joking to Eric959 in a email that I'd got a NSX collection going, he answered more seriously that that was a good idea....... that is how my wallet began to shrink.

I decided to collect tamiya NSX bodies. But I would need chassis to put them on, all my cars are runners even the rare ones, so I wanted good high performance chassis, I decided I would collect ta04 chassis.

I decided to find the rare NSX bodies first and also the rare ta04 parts first. My idea was to build a ta04 TRF , a Pro and an R tuned.

So I started sourcing parts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[t3garett 268]

There are a lot more parts but I would die of old age before I managed to upload them all.

So here is what the ta04 SSG looks like now

 

[Eric959 51]

Excellent you have started a TA04 thread!

It is nice to see the progress you make and to see all of those beautiful new parts. Those NSX bodies are truly little gems.

[t3garett 268]

Thanks Eric959 ! You are greatly responsible for my collection !!!!

The Ta04 SSG above now has the following specs :

Front and rear aluminium diff pulleys, front and rear lightweight diff joints, ceramic diff balls, front and rear lightweight swing shafts, front and rear hard suspension arms, hard 2° rear hubs, front hard c hubs, center aluminium one way pulley, all the blue trf bits and bobs, the trf front and rear stabilisers, limited edition clear +2mm NSX wheels with team sorex tires, front aluminium body posts, low friction drive belts and low friction suspension shafts. It's running with a MRT programmable esc and a dragon peak racing sv2 10x2 turn motor. When racing I use the 2002 raybrig body and when it's on the shelf with it's mates it has this :

 

 

[t3garett 268]

Speaking of its mates, on the shelf it sits next to this :

 

Still can't find the correct green wheels for it so if anyone has any pm me !

[t3garett 268]

I acquired the castrol nsx at a very good price and not some of the ludicrous prices I was offered when I put out an add for it. It was Nib but sadly I was that impatient to get it painted that I didn t take any photos of it before hand like I did with the nsx 2002 carbon pattern, the nsx avex dome (I ll be posting pics soon ) and like I will do with the nsx mobil 1 piaa that is still in the post.

Also if there are any nsx fanatics (like myself) out there feel free to ask me for more photos, I know that during the long months that I spent hunting for Nsx's I realised there are very few good photos of the older Nsx's  on the internet. 

[volvotech 101]

Nice cars, I have a few TA04's in various states right now. Finding the J parts for the carbon chassis was nearly impossible for a while. Found a few on ebay and jumped on them immediately. Will hopefully start building one soon.

[t3garett 268]

Don't know whether this thread is of interest or not but I'll plod on !

Here is my ta04 pro chassis :

It' s fitted out with : front and rear hard suspension arms, low friction suspension shafts, rear 2° hubs, front and rear carbon damper stays, trf big bore dampers and ball diffs. It runs a tamiya super modifier 11turn with a hara twister 2 esc.

It sports the NSX Avex dome Body :

Which turned out like this :

I found the front Avex NSX wheels but can't for the life of me find the rear ones , so I tried to get close to them and to the real car with these :

For info here are the real wheels on the real car :

[svenb 3759]

it's of interest to me mate👍

 

keep posting

sven

[yogi-bear 2315]

I second that, keep posting please. Even though I don't have any TA04s (I'm mainly into TA01, TA02 and FF01's at the moment), its still an interesting thread 

[t3garett 268]

Thanks for the encouragement fellows !

I will keep posting !

Hopefully some new photos tonight, a parcel has arrived this morning !

 

[t3garett 268]

So,

These finally arrived today :

Don't know when I'll have time to do the nsx body but you'll be the first to know !

Also took the ta04 pro out for a run with the castrol nsx body (1st time outing ! ) , it's really magnificent to see it in movement.

[t3garett 268]

Ps: I'm sorry about the photos, I think you've all understood by now that photography is not my strong point

[Wez-li 1790]

Great collection there, i love the NSX.

 

I used to have that HKS Altezza carbon body, used to bash it too with my TL-01 

[Theibault 1535]

Excellent collection! 

[t3garett 268]

16 hours ago, Theibault said:

Excellent collection! 

 

23 hours ago, Wez-li said:

Great collection there, i love the NSX.

 

I used to have that HKS Altezza carbon body, used to bash it too with my TL-01 

Thanks guys !

Bashing a carbon pattern altezza !!!! How can you live with yourself now ???

 

No time for tamiya or photos today, hopefully some spare time friday afternoon. 

[Effigy3 1267]

Très bien monsieur!  Loved reading the story.  So much more interesting than just seeing pics of some chassis and bodies.  That sure is quite the collection you have going there!  Beautiful cars and excellently built.  Perhaps you could get a friend to video a few minutes of run time?